When the McKeever preserve was founded 24 years ago,
no resident box turtle population remained. But octogenarians who grew up
on our 200 acres early in the century report seeing box turtles wandering
the woods, fields and hedgerows of their childhood. Disappearances of box
turtle populations are recalled by "old timers" in most regions of North
America. This impression of the species' decline, sometimes dismissed as
unreliable anecdote, has been confirmed by many scientific studies that have
followed specific box turtle population over long periods. The decline started
generations ago as dirt, then paved, roads subdivided the turtles' ancestral
habitats. Death along their habitual routes to food, nest and hibernation
sites soared as habitat invasion by autos, ATVs and heavy machinery
accelerated.

Few people realize that these remarkable, gentle creatures
can live for more than 120 years in the wild (box turtles reach the longevity
zenith of temperate North American wildlife!). They have high "site fidelity",
meaning that they will live their long lives in a small parcel of the woods
where they hatch, eating slugs, worms, insects, berries, mushrooms, and laying
their eggs.

Unlike sea turtles, box turtles produce small clutches
of only 3 or 4 eggs a year. Temperature & moisture extremes, fungus,
and predators frequently destroy the eggs. Even when one does hatch, the
baby has a slim chance of surviving weather, predator, and other hazards
to attain relative safety from a stronger, protective adult shell and years
of habitat savvy. But a female who survives her first 12 years, to reach
reproductive maturity, can produce a few hundred eggs during her following
60-80 years. From her lifetime egg production, two or three hatchlings can
actually reach adulthood and replace aged adults, sustaining the population.

The impact for a population, of losing that slow trickle
of eggs from an adult, usually goes unrecognized during a human lifespan.
Only recently, as box turtle populations are vanishing, have biologists begun
to understand the delicate population dynamics of this species. One recent
study concluded that loss (by pet collection, traffic, etc.) of just one
adult box turtle from a population each year or two will doom that population
to eradication in the distant future! Too few young are growing up among
their elders to replace the losses.

We who ignorantly (if innocently) collected box turtles
for "pets" were oblivious to the impact of our action: After we took our
few pets, we could look around and see "LOTS" of adults still left in the
woods the rest of our lives ... but since adults live so long, the population
we saw was an increasingly "geriatric" one with too few young to sustain
it in the distant future. This impact mushroomed by 1990 as escalating pet
collecting removed tens of thousands each year for the international pet
trade alone! Because of the serious decline through much of their former
range, all types of Box Turtle received special protection in February, 1995
under provisions of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species,
in an attempt to reduce the pet trade's contribution toward the Box Turtle's
extinction. While international trafficking in box turtles now carries threat
of $20,000 fines plus imprisonment, environmental law enforcement (always
very difficult) can not solve the problem alone. Public education and abandoning
the traditional practice of collecting domestic pets from the wild are critically
needed. YOU can help by sharing this information on box turtle natural
history.

Pet collecting is a major cause of the eradication
of the species in many areas, but releasing and moving turtles also contribute.
Some turtles who have been relocated and released (sometimes by biologists
and hobbyists wanting to move turtles to safer surroundings, sometimes by
pet traders wanting to avoid veterinary or other maintenance costs for turtles
that were diseased or not selling fast enough) harbored pathogens contracted
from humans or other species, and passed them to wild populations where they
were released. A released turtle has a homing instinct that causes it to
search for its home; a box turtle moved much more than a quarter mile is
not likely to find its way back home ... its subsequent fruitless searching
(which can last for years) may not only bring the wandering turtle into harm's
way and a fatal end, but can also carry any disease it harbors to other turtles
it encounters. Many families wrongly assume that a turtle picked up in one
place, and kept at home for a while, will simply "make a new home and live
happily ever after" when released in the nice woods of a park or friendly
farmer. More knowledgeable families, keeping one for the summer and then
conscientiously releasing it where they collected it so it could find its
usual hibernation site, still overlook the threats of disease and captivity's
privation of the months of gradual adaptation to cooler weather, and the
advanced cessation in eating, necessary to prepare the turtle for successful
hibernation. (Moral: LEAVE THEM BE!)

McKeever's Effort to Help

The Box Turtles who inhabited the land that is now
McKeever Center fell victim, like those in so many other locales, to the
ravages of habitat loss, roads and pet collection. They disappeared by the
1950's after "Rocky Basin" (a former retreat on property that is now the
McKeever Center) was opened to picnicking, camping and other human recreation
in the 1930's. Long term studies in the midwest have clearly demonstrated
that opening habitat to human recreation produces dramatic declines in resident
turtle populations.

To help develop conservation strategies for this species,
McKeever accepted the 1993 proposal by Bill Belzer (Clarion University biologist)
to host a pioneering project to use perpetual radiotelemetric retrieval,
monitoring and protection of individual turtles, nest & hibernation sites
in an effort to rebuild our extirpated box turtle population. Belzer's protocol
takes care to prevent the ecological mistakes of the past. The founders for
rebuilding the lost McKeever Box Turtle population are not collected from
the wild; they are displaced turtles (donated by Animal Rehab Centers,
veterinarians, school classrooms, etc.) that have lost their homes through
injury, habitat destruction and captivity. Qualified turtles can not originate
beyond a 300 mile radius. To protect our accumulating "expatriate" population
against disease that each new donated turtle could bring from its previous
contact with humans or other species, new arrivals are first quarantined
and their health assured. Disposable examination gloves, or phenol-free
antiseptic hand spray, are used whenever a turtle is handled during clinical
or field routines, to reduce risk of pathogen transfer.

Radiotransmitters attached to each released turtle
permit us to monitor movements and the individual's welfare during the years
it takes the turtle to settle in and gradually learn the best sites for forage,
drink, hibernacula, nesting and sun. Their wounds and infections receive
timely veterinary care; poorly chosen hibernation sites receive added leaf
cover as winter's cold deepens; far ranging individuals are returned to the
heart of McKeever woods when they approach roads or other human hazards.
Happily, our intensive surveillance/care prevented the death of any of our
30 turtles during the project's first 5 years. Harsh weather and predators
often kill 10% of the adults in an unattended population each year. One of
our turtles (a female donated to the project after recovering from loss of
a leg to auto traffic) was stolen (presumably for a pet). Information st ns,
planned for the hiking trails, we hope will discourage further poaching.

The cost to responsibly repatriate a turtle is so
high that no other project in the country (let alone PA) is investing the
human & financial resources needed to intensively guide dislocated turtles
through the 5 or more years required for their adjustment to, learning of,
and settling into new habitat in small (80 hectare) preserve's like McKeever's.
Without such intercession, most of the box turtles that now get moved from
their natal homes by casual pet collectors each year face premature death.
While human hours in the field are donated, supply & equipment costs
exceed $1,000 for each turtle before it is finally repatriated. A one-time
start-up grant from the Clarion University Foundation helped launch this
project, but the $10,000 - $15,000 of funds now needed each year for supplies,
transmitter and equipment replacement, and veterinary care all come from
private donors. A Turtle Trust Fund has been established to build an endowment
that will continue McKeever's box turtle conservation effort, in perpetuity,
following the death of the project's originator. Donations can be made to
Venango Area Community Foundation/Belzer Turtle Trust; 213 Seneca Street
Oil City, PA 16301; (814) 677-5085.

In time, we hope refinements of strategies & methods
we use now can lead to more affordable protocols that might be adopted &
sustained by other preserves (but note the caution AGAINST adding displaced
turtles to any preserve that already has an extant box turtle population).
The magnitude of the displaced turtle problem can be mitigated if people
learn to stop moving box turtles from native homes. When found crossing a
road, they should be helped to the side toward which they are headed (and
hope that they spend most of their time in the adjacent woods, away from
that highway, thereafter). Moving them to a distant site simply dooms the
animal to begin searching for its former home, multiplying its likelihood
of encountering highways and other hazardous areas.

Thinned populations become "reproductively dead":
too few meetings among mates occur to sustain the group. Not until we added,
to our field routine, interventions to ensure male/female encounters did
we get any eggs. Babies that have hatched out ON SITE hold the real promise
for steadily rebuilding a resident population at McKeever. Such hatchlings,
we believe, will regard McKeever woods as home and establish home ranges
there, thereby requiring less intensive surveillance than "transplanted"
adults. But some level of surveillance and intervention will always be needed,
to augment mating, hatching and survival because of the unnatural drain on
a population posed by highways, mechanical & canine threats inherent
in a residential & agricultural periphery, and ignorant or malicious
hikers who poach animals.

If you are lucky enough to see a box turtle wandering
the woods, please leave it untouched; simply revel in the peaceful privilege/joy
of beholding a life form that graced this earth before (and long after) the
age of dinosaurs!... a sight that fewer and fewer humans now experience.
Let's keep humanity from being an unfortunate accident that ends this remarkable
creature's history on earth. Much of our damage stems from ignorance; Please
"spread the word" to school classes, Scout groups, etc. Trying to return
a lost species (to even a small area like McKeever's 200 acres) consumes
monumental, unending expenditures of money and time - expenditures that,
in the end, may not succeed. Any hope for preserving turtles (and other types
of wild life) for our children depends on people learning about the delicacy
of population dynamics, the need to not move or touch turtles, and the need
to work to protect large tracts of land that are not carved up by access
roads. Conservation is infinitely less expensive than remediation. Ignorant
practices need to be abandoned.

If you would like more information on the Eastern Box Turtle Conservation Project, please contact Dr. Bill Belzer in one of the following ways:
Phone him at Clarion University (Venango Campus) - (814) 676-6591 ext.219
Phone him at home - (814) 677-8617
e-mail Dr. Belzer at wbelzer@clarion.edu
Or write to him at:

Persephone is a female who was forwarded by Edwin G. Belzer, Sr (father of
the founder of McKeever's box turtle project). You can see that 'Seph had
been attacked by a predator who chewed off part of her shell and some toes
on her right front foot; she recovered, and was kept captive for a time.
The owner, who no longer recalled her exact collection site, upon learning
of the risks that confront a relocated turtle, abandoned his plan to release
her into unfamiliar woods and forwarded her to McKeever. Click here
to see Persephone.

Red is a male who was found crossing a highway as he moved away from a large
woodlot that was being heavily logged, and toward a residential area. The
donor (Dr Martha Ritter of Clarion University), seeing Red on the road,
recognized that he faced probable death if he returned to the woodlot and
the heavy machinery rolling through it, but faced no better prospects if
he migrated into the adjacent residential area. Red may well have been a
relict of a decimated population, as no residents could recall box turtles
in the area for many years. Click here to see
Red

McKeever's first hatchlings came in 1996 from a nest that was protected by
screen installed by volunteer Clarion U. student, Ann Davis, following her
late night vigil to guard any nesting females. All hatchlings were eaten
by raccoons the following year; the predators breached the fenced enclosure
designed to protect young during their first 6-7 years in the McKeever habitat.
The hatchling enclosure now receives additional protection from an electrified
perimeter. Click here to see the
hatchlings.